Psalm 24:1-10
A Psalm of David
THE earth is the LORD’s, and all its fullness,
The world and those who dwell therein. For He has founded it upon the seas, And established it upon the waters.
Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD?
Or who may stand in His holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive blessing from the LORD, And righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek Him, Who seek Your face. Selah
Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is he this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, The LORD mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O you gates! Lift up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is he this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory. Selah
As we conclude our study in the Easter trilogy, we want to review again the importance of these three Psalms. In Psalm 22 we discover the prophetic nature of the Suffering Servant. In Psalm 23 we notice the credentials of the Good Shepherd. And in Psalm 24, we find King David singing the exaltation of the Sovereign Savior!
Introduction – The Sovereignty of God
Newscaster Paul Harvey tells a remarkable story of God’s providential care over thousands of allied prisoners during World War II, many of whom were Christians. One of America’s mighty bombers took off from the island of Guam headed for Kokura, Japan, with a deadly cargo. Because clouds covered the target area, the sleek B-29 circled for nearly an hour until its fuel supply reached the danger point. The captain and his crew, frustrated because they were right over the primary target yet not able to fulfill their mission, finally decided they had better go for the secondary target. Changing course, they found that the sky was clear. The command was given, “Bombs away!” and the B-29 headed for its home base. Some time later an officer received some startling information from military intelligence. Just one week before that bombing mission, the Japanese had transferred one of their largest concentrations of captured Americans to the city of Kokura. Upon reading this, the officer exclaimed, “Thank God for that protecting cloud! If the city hadn’t been hidden from the bomber, it would have been destroyed and thousands of American boys would have died.” God’s ways are behind the scenes; but He moves all the scenes which He is behind. We have to learn this, and let Him work. (John Nelson Darby/sermonillustrations.com)
God watches over all things and all people. But He has a special love for those who have committed themselves to Him! He is the Sovereign Savior! He loves sinners like you and me!
Let’s examine God’s Word in this 24th Psalm.
First, we observe that He is…
The POSSESSOR of Earth 1-2
Everything belongs to Him. There are two reasons why He is the owner. We hear God’s CLAIM! He owns it all! It was His idea to create everything from nothing. It was His idea to redeem mankind! And it was His idea to establish a relationship with sinners like us. We also hear him say that it is His CREATION! He controls it all! The waters are held back by His mighty hand. It has been said that if the waters were not held back that the entire earth would be covered by a mile and a half of water. He is the Creator and Maintainer of His world and universe.
Illustration – It’s All Mine
George W. Truett, the former pastor of FBC Dallas, was invited to dinner in the home of a very wealthy man. After the meal, the host led him to a place where they could get a good view of the surrounding area. Pointing to the oil wells punctuating the landscape, he boasted, “Twenty-five years ago I had nothing. Now, as far as you can see, it’s all mine.” Looking in the opposite direction at his sprawling fields of grain, he said, “That’s all mine.” Turning east toward huge herds of cattle, he bragged, “They’re all mine.” Then pointing to the west and a beautiful forest, he exclaimed, “That too is all mine.”
He paused, expecting Dr. Truett to compliment him on his great success. Truett, however, placing one hand on the man’s shoulder and pointing heavenward with the other, simply said, "How much do you have in that direction"? The man hung his head and confessed, "I never thought of that?”
Our Daily Bread, October 24, 1992
Man may think the things he earns are his but the truth is that EVERYTHING belongs to God! What we have are the blessings God has given us. We receive grace not justice through Jesus Christ.
Because all things belong to Him, we now perceive the scripture revealing…
The PREDICAMENT of Man 3-6
As we say in Texas, “Boy are we in a pickle!” Mankind is in a mess because of sin. We are a rebellious, cantankerous and ornery people. The Bible describes us as being stiff-necked. In verse three, the writer asks two questions. Who may ascend and who may stand. It is here we see our CHARACTER questioned. The answer is no one may be able to ascend or stand in the presence of God! We are all equally guilty of sin! Romans 3:23 screams that all are sinners! Yet our society disbelieves God’s condemnation. We also see our CONSCIENCE confronted. This is presented in both a positive and negative way. The positive is that no one has clean hands or a pure heart. We are sinners. Negatively, we are all like sheep having gone astray. We stray by doing and speaking selfishly. We make things or self an idol. We lie repeatedly to people who we really are. Only God knows the inner thoughts and motives of who we are. But there is hope! In verses five and six, we see that our CONDITION can be corrected! We receive the blessing through Jesus! We are transformed! Jacob was transformed through the power of God. His name was changed and he was never the same. We are to seek His face and presence. Rom 12:1-2 tells us that we are to be living sacrifices. We are to be transformed by the Word of God through the Spirit of God to the glory of God. We have a condition that can only be corrected by the Great Physician.
Illustration – Giving it all to Christ
Dale Hays writes: “On a recent trip to Haiti, I heard a Haitian pastor illustrate to his congregation the need for total commitment to Christ. His parable: A certain man wanted to sell his house for $2,000. Another man wanted very badly to buy it, but because he was poor, he couldn’t afford the full price. After much bargaining, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the original price with just one stipulation: He would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from just over the door. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So the first owner went out, found the carcass of a dead dog, and hung it from the single nail he still owned. Soon the house became unlivable, and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail.” The moral of the parable is, “If we leave the devil with even one small peg in our life, he will return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making it unfit for Christ’s habitation.”
(Dale A. Hays, Leadership, Vol. X, No. 3 (Summer, 1989), p. 35.)
We can allow no place for Satan to put a toehold in. we must recognize that only a sovereign Savior can answer the call for our predicament.
In verses 7-10, we hear…
The PROCLAMATION of the Messiah 7-10
This prophetic Psalm was given for us to know the battle was won and the war is over. Trusting the Lord Jesus Christ is difficult for some people. Seeing may be believing to Missourians but I know that believing is seeing. In the proclamation of the Messiah, we hear the COMMAND given. Lift up you gates! It is a decree to welcome the victorious Warrior! He has been out to battle and is returning with His spoils of war. This is an eternal victory! He has accomplished what no man could accomplish. Then we discern the CONFLICT involved. He is the strong and mighty. No angel or man could finish what Jesus finished. His death, burial and resurrection are our victory! What a Savior! Then we find the CONQUEST resolved. He returns home with His mighty hosts. The word for hosts here is army. It means that the victorious Warrior returns by the witness of His creation and the multitudes of His angels and people.
Illustration – Hey the War is Over!
For thirty years, Hiroo Onoda was stuck in that time warp known as 1944. The rest of the world continued to change around him, but Onoda stayed the same. When he reemerged into our modern world, he was not prepared for what he would see. Onoda, of course, never did travel into space. Instead he was lost in another form of time.
He was born in the town of Kainan, Japan in 1922 and when he turned seventeen, he went to work for a trading company in China. Onoda lived the life of any ordinary teenager. He worked all of the day and partied all of the night at the local dance halls.
In May of 1942, Onoda was drafted into the Japanese military right just after the United States entered the war and fighting escalated to a global scale. Unlike most soldiers, he attended a school that trained men for guerilla warfare. At a time when becoming a prisoner of war was considered by the Japanese to be a crime punishable by death, Onoda was taught that this action was okay and to stay alive at all costs.
On December 26, 1944, Apprentice Officer Hiroo Onoda was sent to the small tropical island of Lubang, which is approximately seventy-five miles southwest of Manila in the Philippines. His orders were straightforward. He was to do anything to hamper enemy attack on the island. This included destroying the Lubang airport and the pier at the harbor. He was sent in alone, ordered not to die by his own hand, and was told to take as many years as was needed to accomplish his mission.
But as the years passed by, you would think that he would want to surrender to those who were pleading for him to give up.
You must understand his whole rationale. First, he was trained to treat everything with suspect. Second, it was well understood that it could take one hundred years to win the war and that Japan would never surrender until every last Japanese citizen had been killed. In his mind, there were still Japanese citizens alive, so, clearly, the war must have been still going on.
He was prepared to die on the island. Then, February 20, 1974, he encountered a young Japanese university dropout named Suzuki living alone in a tent. Suzuki had left Japan to travel the world and told his friends that he was “going to look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order. He found Onoda and Onoda approached cautiously and the two soon struck up a conversation that lasted many hours. The two became friends, but Onoda said that he was waiting for orders from one of his commanders.
Suzuki left and promised that he would return. And he did.
On March 9, 1974, Onoda went to an agreed upon place and found a note that had been left by Suzuki. Along with the note, Suzuki had enclosed two photos that they had taken together the first time that they met along with copies of two army orders. The next day, Onoda decided to take a chance and made a two-day journey to meet up with Suzuki. His long hike paid off handsomely. Suzuki had brought along Onoda’s one-time superior commander, Major Taniguchi, who delivered the oral orders for Onoda to surrender his sword. Hiroo Onoda’s thirty-year war was now over.
To see the full story, go to (http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/) [Useless info].
Psalm 24 is a song of victory! Our Savior has encountered the worst men could throw at Him and He was victorious. Are you resting and trusting in Him or still fighting the battle?
